A Message to my Readers

Article posted Wed Dec 24 11:28:22 2003

I began this film review Web site back in 2002, and as I look back I am quite proud of what I have accomplished so far. I have nearly 200 film reviews posted. I have written almost two dozen in-depth feature articles, on everything from the “real stories” behind The Exorcist, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and The Amityville Horror to silly foreign title translations. I have also included news and coverage of film festivals such as the Toronto International Film Festival, the Istanbul Film Festival, and the High Falls Film Festival.

A big part of the challenge in doing this Web site was figuring out how many to do. Magazines and newspapers typically have three or four staff critics, spreading the load among individual writers. You may see all the new and recent films reviewed, but it’s the effort of a team over the course of weeks. With Radford Reviews, it’s just me. My stated goal was to review two or three films per week, and I have tried to come close to that for over a year now. This is actually more than many professional, full-time film critics do, and they’re getting paid!

While I can’t compete with the quantity of regular outlets, I can often beat even the biggest and best with speed. I can have a new film review up in hours, not days and have often scooped even the biggest and best-known critics. And I think the quality of my reviews is as good as or better than much of the film comment out there.

I have found that I spend an average of ten hours per week doing film reviews; this includes seeing the films, travel time to and from the theaters, writing, revising, and posting the reviews, as well as doing feature articles and various site maintenance.

I’m afraid I cannot keep up the pace; at ten hours per week, that’s 40 hours a month or the equivalent of one workweek per month spent on films, much of it for this Web site. I have a full-time job that already takes up 40 hours per week; that extra 10 hours per week for the film reviews comes out of my nights and weekends, leaving less and less time for a personal life and other writing pursuits that I might actually get paid for. This is a labor of love, but at some point even labors of love must be held to manageable limits or they will become black holes of time and effort.

I will continue Radford Reviews, but I will be posting fewer reviews, about one per week. I hope you continue to find my reviews entertaining, provoking, and/or enlightening… I am writing them for you and others like you. I invite you to peruse the review archives and the article archives (currently only partly up, but we are working out the bugs). I thank you for your continued interest and support of Radford Reviews. As always, I invite any comments, criticism, or suggestions. Have a great holiday and an even better 2004!

Ben